I knew something was up with AllisBrawl but I did not know it went all the way to Smashboards and Project M?!?!

Originally Posted by http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/1l8m0h/the_great_smash_ddos_of_2013/

Smashers,
An update on The Great Smash DDoS of 2013
Smashboards has been down since ~6PM PT Sunday evening. Aside from a brief 5 hour reprieve on August 26th (~3AM-8AM PT) we have been unable to prevent what is a serious DDoS to Smashboards. This appears to be a targeted effort against the Smash community - with Allisbrawl and Project M both being targeted (and purportedly others).
All of the owners of these sites (myself, Strongbad/Warchamp, and Neal/JV) are working together to bring things back online and we are sharing information about potential solutions. What we know so far:

First signs of an attack occurred against AllisBrawl on August 15. AllisBrawl has been combatting the DDoS ever since

On August 16, Smashboards came under an (intrusive) attack that lead us to reset and load an earlier instance of our database (losing ~10 hours of data)

On August 25 Smashboards went down due to a DDoS attack

In the morning of August 27 (I believe) Project M (projectmgame.com) went down due to a DDoS attack

All currently attempted solutions to combat these attacks have failed, whomever the attacker is has been quite dedicated in their attempts to bring down the entire community of sites, adapting their methods and changing

All three sites (smashboards.com, allisbrawl.com, projectmgame.com) are right now, at this very moment, under a sustained DDoS attack

I'd like to thank the community for staying patient with us as we attempt to move through these issues. The support the community shows is always top notch and if anything, this DDoS is a result of the communities outstanding growth and success over the years.
To make this post slightly more informative, here is a list of random things I have kept in my brain since joining the community in 2003:

The Smash community operates ~800 tournaments per year with nearly zero sponsorship. Aside from the Best Buy Brawl launch tournaments and Gamestop Brawl launch tournaments in 2008, Smash has never received developer support for its tournaments or community - making it's thriving nature all the more impressive.

Smash tournaments award over ~$500,000 yearly

Contrary to recent opinion, Brawl is actually not dead, considering it held one of its largest tournaments ever (Apex 2013) this year and held a 100+ person event just a few weeks ago. By all standards except Melee/SF/MvC Brawl would be in an envious position.

Smash Melee was the only game at EVO 2013 that was also at EVO 2007.

Smash has been one of the top 3 fighting games in attendance and number of tournaments for ~7 years. 2005 was the take off point with MLG leading to the first golden age of Smash (2006-2007).

Smash likely has the highest payouts for a fighting game over the lifetime of the series (numbers in the millions). MLG alone contributed roughly $150,000 in prize money in 2006 and 2010 in just 13 tournaments, leading to the largest payout for a single fighting game tournament win (tied with Tekken, also from MLG) of $12,500 to Gnes. The second largest payout at a single fighting game tournament also belongs to Smash - $12,000 to Ken at MLG Vegas 2006 for winning 2v2, 3rd in 1v1, and winning the $4,000 season point prize. * MLG Dallas 2010 had nearly $40,000 in prizes to the Brawl top 8. For comparison, EVO would have needed 4,000 entrants to award the same amount of cash. EDIT: apparently, 3rd place behind the 25th anniversary tournament for SF and SFxT. http://www.streetfighter25.com/en/tournaments/

Ken and Isai went 1,091 days without losing a 2v2 tournament.

First and biggest (inter)national tournament was Tournament Go 4 - I started playing right around this time and my friend the Muffin King had the DVD of the matches from the tournament. They featured items play and stages like Corneria, Pokefloats, and Mute City.

After nearly every large tournament since I can remember, some portion of the community claims to be 'retiring' and that Smash is 'dying'.

The original rivalry was Azen vs. Ken, Azen wouldn't get a win here until MLG New York in 2006 in a comeback match

Don't forget the rough age difference between a Brawl player and a Melee player would be ~8 years - or the difference between an average community age in the late teens vs. the mid-to-late 20s.

The four best Smashers in 2005 were undeniably Ken, Isai, Azen, and ChuDat. Today only ChuDat appears at events even semi-consistently.

Ken took 2nd place at EVO 2008 in Brawl after having spent 39 days on Survivor in Gabon - taking 5th place and being finally voted out on day 37.

EVO 2013 was actually not the largest Smash tournament to date - that title belongs to Apex 2013.

Marth won nearly every Melee major tournament through 2007 due to the dominance of Ken, Azen, and Mew2King. This was followed by Puff with Mango and Hbox.

There is a lot more but it is late and Smashboards needs attention. Good luck everyone, keep Smashing!

Damn these Smash haters
It seems they are attacking what I consider the 3 pillars of the Smash Community simultaneously.